How Drata Scaled Upskilling for 400+ Remote Employees With Collaborative Learning Academies

The challenges

As a fast-moving company in the security and compliance space, Drata needed an agile learning solution that could support their growing workforce while maintaining the high standards their industry demands.

When Dana Fagley joined as Senior Manager of Learning and Development in July 2022, she faced an ambitious task: to build an L&D team from scratch, along with scalable programs for upskilling and leadership development.

Scaling L&D with a small team

Before 360Learning, Drata’s learning programs were largely ad hoc. They relied on a basic LMS for mandatory compliance training, leaving employees to seek out their own resources. With no clear structure in place, it was difficult to scale programs effectively. For a new L&D team of one, this fragmented approach created a major roadblock to delivering consistent and engaging learning experiences.

Admin overload and lack of automation

Because Drata’s growth outpaced the capabilities of its legacy LMS, administrators were swamped with repetitive tasks such as enrolling users and juggling multiple spreadsheets. Without an efficient, automated system, even routine L&D tasks were time-consuming. This made it challenging to track training initiatives, get insights on learner engagement, or free up enough time to create robust learning content.

Limited opportunities for employee upskilling

Employees wanted more than just mandatory compliance courses—they needed clear pathways for growth and upskilling in a highly regulated industry. Without a collaborative framework, subject-matter experts (SMEs) had little incentive (or support) to share their knowledge. As a result, valuable expertise was kept in silos, and Drata struggled to offer up-to-date, role-specific training.

Lack of key integrations for seamless L&D

In addition to scaling and automation challenges, Drata’s existing tech stack further complicated matters. Their previous LMS and HRIS didn’t integrate well, forcing users to jump between platforms and leaving administrators with incomplete records. For a small team aiming to prove the value of L&D programs, the lack of robust integrations and consolidated reporting made it difficult to secure leadership buy-in.

The solutions

Drata needed a learning platform that could simplify administration, empower SME-led training, and seamlessly connect to its existing systems. After evaluating multiple vendors, they chose 360Learning for its strong authoring and integration capabilities, as well as its blend of flexibility and intuitive interface for both learners and admins. Here’s how they tackled each challenge:

Automation as the foundation for scalable learning

To handle a rapidly growing workforce with a small L&D team, Drata leveraged 360Learning features like automatic user enrollment, updates, notifications, and real-time reporting dashboards. With much of the administrative “busywork” automated, Dana and her team could shift their focus to designing high-impact learning experiences.

Centralized tools for more efficient L&D delivery

By consolidating enrollment, content delivery, reporting, and communications in one place, Drata significantly reduced administrative overhead. Instead of juggling multiple platforms and spreadsheets, admins and learners gained a single source of truth for all training initiatives. The 360Learning dashboards also made it easy to measure engagement and track progress across the organization, streamlining processes and driving a more strategic approach to L&D.

Collaborative learning Academies for a stronger learning culture

To promote ongoing skill development, Drata implemented branded Academies to foster employee-led, collaborative learning. One standout example is the Author Academy—a self-paced certification program teaching employees how to create training courses in 360Learning. This empowers everyone at Drata, from leaders to individual contributors, to share expertise company-wide and helps close skills gaps internally.

Drata also launched the New and Emerging Leader Academy, aimed at developing current and future leaders. This initiative led to a 2x increase in learner engagement from one quarter to the next, reflecting how peer-driven content can supercharge upskilling efforts.

“360Learning has provided a platform that makes content creation and user permissions super simple so that our SMEs could create their own content, getting us out of the way.”
– Dana Fagley

A seamless integration with OpenSesame 

A key factor in Drata’s decision to switch to 360Learning was its seamless integration with content provider OpenSesame.

By incorporating OpenSesame’s vast library of curated content directly into the 360Learning platform, Drata gave its workforce immediate access to a range of off-the-shelf courses, from microlearning modules to podcasts and book summaries.

This meant the L&D team could easily roll out new training, and administrators had powerful tools for tracking completion and engagement—all in one place.

“360Learning and OpenSesame’s partnership felt like the perfect fit, offering low-lift, high-impact programs that are crucial for small L&D teams like ours.”
– Dana Fagley

The results

Drata’s partnership with 360Learning and OpenSesame has helped them take a more strategic approach to learning and development. Here are some of the key metrics reflecting their success:

• 172+ active platform users showing increased engagement as more employees and SMEs join the platform.

• 200% increase in average training time from Q1 to Q2 (from 2 hours to 6 hours per user) last year, driven by engaging initiatives like the New and Emerging Leader Academy.

• 70+% increase in average connections per user from Q1 to Q2 (from 7 to 12 connections) highlighting stronger collaborative learning across the organization.

Employees are now better equipped to address core organizational challenges and close emerging skills gaps, while stakeholders recognize the L&D team’s growing impact on Drata’s success.

What’s next

Drata’s experience with 360Learning shows the power of a well-integrated L&D platform for hypergrowth organizations–enabling Drata’s small L&D team to operate at scale. By providing on-demand learning and empowering SMEs, they’ve built a collaborative learning culture that supports both employee engagement and business growth. 

Next up, Drata’s L&D team plans to expand optional learning paths and to add training that helps their employees succeed with AI-powered authoring tools in 360Learning.

Ready to see how 360Learning can transform your L&D strategy? Request a personalized demo today and discover how our AI-powered collaborative learning platform can help your organization upskill at scale.